When all I see is the battle, You see my victory.
When all I see is the mountain, You see a mountain moved.
When all I see are the ashes, You see the beauty.
When all I see is a cross, God, You see the empty tomb.
—from The Battle Belongs to You by Phil Wickham
When I only see the battle—the mountain—and the ashes of my life, then all I see is the cross. But when I see what you see, Lord—when I see my life from your perspective, I see your victory. I see the mountain moved. I see the living beauty of your Grace because I see what you see—an empty tomb.
When I only see the cross, I miss the Resurrection power of the empty tomb. The same battle is waged again and again. The mountain is always in front of me. My life perpetually stays in ashes. But when I allow your truth to challenge my understanding—when I dare to gain your perspective, then I believe the victory has already been won on the cross. The battle becomes nothing. In my spirit, I’m not the old person I once was. My ashes have risen to live again because of new life in you.
Convince me who I am in you, Jesus. Show me, Holy Spirit, how to gain your perspective. My perspective is all flesh. Your perspective is all spirit and life. Reveal to me the new person you have made me. I desire only to see and hear with your understanding—to know myself as you know me.
There had to be a cross for me to know the Resurrection power of the empty tomb. Lord, when I fail to believe that I am your finished work, I miss the miracle of the empty tomb. I remain defeated and powerless to stand strong against the enemy in the battles of life. When I allow you to teach me the person you have made me, I receive understanding of your finished work on the cross. I know it was perfect. There is nothing else I have to do but to receive—to believe in your finished work of salvation full of joy and peace and health—to exercise by faith all you have given me.
You have given me beauty for ashes! I don’t have to live as if the cross never took place! I have nothing to prove. When I see that the war and all its battles have already been won—that everything is finished—done, I rest in the peace and the power of the empty tomb. I have nothing to prove. I just receive by faith what you have given me.
“I do not cease to give thanks for you,” Paul writes to me, “making mention of you in my prayers: that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe, according to the working of His mighty power which He worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality and power and might and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to come” (Ephesians 1:16-21, NKJV).
Only you reveal truth, Holy Spirit! Thank you for continually imparting a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of your Word! Reveal yourself to all who are hungry enough to seek and seek and seek again. When we seek, we find the revelation of your amazing Grace. The cross is done. We live in the power of your resurrection life. No more death. No more fear. No more sickness. No more crying. No more pain.
Your Kingdom lives within us. May it rise like the phoenix from the ashes to new life!
© 2022 Lynn Lacher
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